Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Gore Vidal Delivers State of the Union

We might give him some idea of our state, which is one of great dissatisfaction with him and his regime. And there's talk of perhaps demonstrating in front of the Capitol or here or there around the country to show that the union is occupied by people who happen to be patriots. And patriots do not like this government.This is an unpatriotic government. This is a government that deals openly in illegalities.Now, we’ve had idiots as presidents before. He's not unique. But he's certainly the most active idiot that we have ever had. I had a piece on the internet some of you may have seen a few days ago, and there's a story about Tiberius, who's one of my favorite Roman emperors. He's had a very bad press, because the wrong people perhaps have written history. But when he became emperor, the Senate of Rome sent him congratulations with the comment, "Any law that you want us to pass, we shall do so automatically." And he sent a message back. He said, "This is outrageous! Suppose I go mad. Suppose I don't know what I'm doing. Suppose I'm dead and somebody is pretending to be me. Never do that! Never accept something like preemptive war," which luckily the Senate did not propose preemptive wars against places they didn't like. But Mr. Bush has done that. Gore Vidal is one of my favorite writers. His book about our third Vice President, Aaron Burr, changed the way I think about our founding fathers and taught me to look at our politics and history in a more critical way. Love him or hate him, he makes you think. You can hear the whole thing at Democracy Now: